


Obladi, Obladah (Life Goes On)

by BloodiedRose



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Immortal Abigail, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Abigail is the immortal of the family, not Henry. Things change, things stay the same, and those two still are unable to get a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obladi, Obladah (Life Goes On)

**Author's Note:**

> The reception to my last fic, both here and on tumblr, were overwhelming to say the least. I'm very thankful, it means so much to me. This was my actual first Forever fic, but it needed a bit more work which was why it was published later. Title from the Beatles song of the same name. (Also, the first few times I tried to post this it crashed my computer. I’m hoping that isn’t a sign…)

Sometimes, Doctor Abigail Morgan questioned whether she was truly immortal. Her lungs were still breathing and her brain still functioned, but it felt as though her heart was as cold and empty as those of the corpses she spent her days with. She hadn't felt alive since the day she, weak and frightened, had fled from her ageing Henry. 

It hurt, to watch the love of her life wither before her eyes, decaying beneath the sands of time in ways that she could not. It was not the pain of a paper cut, or a gunshot. Not even the gouged wound that remained from when John had forced her into the asylum could compare to watching her beloved turn from the remarkable man she had met in the midst of a battlefield into an old and feeble one. 

He had denied that anything was wrong, smiling as if he was still in his prime and she did not appear to be his daughter. His smile had let her believe that there was nothing wrong, that they could live like this- forever. But pneumonia had broken her resolve. Though he had recovered, she had still seen the glimpse of his mortality, could see it barrelling towards them. So, she had ran away.

Abraham had found her some years later, digging graves in Louisiana. Her heart had stopped when he arrived at her door, still her beautiful little boy even though he now looked older than she did. She had missed him, so much.

“You left us!” He had yelled, righteously angry. He had continued to berate her for abandoning them, leaving them no way of checking that she was alright. Then he was crying, heaving sobs that shuddered his body with each gasp. Abigail wrapped him in her arms, unable to stop herself when her boy was in need of comfort. From a scraped knee to his divorces, she had never been able to resist an upset son. 

It was her fault that he was sad, she had broken the heart of her own son in order to protect her own. How terribly selfish. She had known it would hurt them, but she had still clung to the thought that Henry and Abe would be able to cope with each other, to stay together and heal and forget the pain she had caused them. Perhaps Henry hated her for hurting their son, for hurting him. Perhaps that was why he did not come.

“Dad’s dead,” Abe sobbed, and Abigail felt as if the world had been removed from beneath her. Abraham told her the story between heaving sobs. Henry was dead, had killed himself with opiates hidden away from Abraham’s hippie phase and Abigail’s curious experimentation, mixed with a bottle of cheap bourbon for which Abigail’s Henry would not have even permitted a glance. And it was all her fault.

He had left behind a note, a small apology to Abe without any plead for forgiveness, written in Henry’s best calligraphy. It was most likely written in the few hours since she had left that Henry had been sober. Her hands shook as she held it, and she felt as if she was intruding on something private, meant for the eyes of their son and not the woman that had caused them pain.

That night, Abigail laid out the same concoction that Henry had succumbed to. She went slowly, savouring each pill she placed in her mouth, chasing it down with the foul liquor that burned at her throat until only a horrid after-taste had remained.

Abe was dead to the world, for which she was grateful. She did not want him to see, to understand what his father went through. He had already found the body of one parent. He did not need to watch the death of another.

She lay down on the floor, in order to create as little noise as possible. The drugs began to overtake her system, and horrific pain began to shoot through her veins. She was choking, and her heart was beating too fast. 

Abigail had woken in the lake a few minutes walk from her cottage. Escaping from the water, she ripped open the bag of towels and clothes that she had stowed by the lake, winter too cold to run naked to her house. 

Dressed and dried, she had then returned home and sobbed herself to sleep. Apologies poured from her lips as she lamented the horrid way her husband had ended his own life. He was a doctor, he could have chosen a far less painful way. But he hadn't, and it was all because of her. That night, arms wrapped around herself and eyes staring into the nothingness that resided behind her eyelids, she decided that she would find a way to die.

Several months passed without event. Abraham stayed with her in her old cottage, and she found herself desperately clinging to the company. Each moment she spent with Abe was a bandage on the wound in her heart, and she wondered how she had ever lived without him. 

“You know, we could make quite a bit of money off of this,” Abe had said one night as he rifled through some jewels she had kept from the late 19th century. Abe had never settled into a career, drifting until he could find one that he could keep. He had not inherited the calling of a doctor, claiming that three Doctor Morgans would be rather overzealous. 

“Harmless trinkets, I don’t see what use they would be,” Abigail said, absent mindedly drumming her fingernails on the kitchen table. Abraham turned to her.  
“There’s actually a big market for this stuff. Authentic antiquities can sell for a lot of money,” he explained, flipping through an old book.

And so, she had returned to New York with Abe, selling away her pain and her life held in the trinkets she had collected throughout the years. She did not mind so much, as long as her son remained with her. Already she had killed one of her boys, she was not letting go of the other. 

They had taken up residence in an beautiful shop on a New York corner, luxurious apartment above and a laboratory for her below. Clients began to come steadily, and Abraham soon proved to have not only a skill but a passion for antiquities. 

Only photos were to remain untouched, memories that could not be replaced. She had Henry had argued so often, him viewing it as a strange compulsion of hers when they were so desperate to flee. He had always been so afraid someone would find her, would hurt her. More concerned over her safety than she had ever been.

Abigail would stand at her window and watch the street below, watching things new and things old with an ache in her heart. Another few months, and she could almost stroll through the city that she adored without seeing Henry carved into its heart. 

Returning to the morgue had taken less of her than she thought it would, her hands and mind itching for the puzzle of a body. Some days, she ached to heal, to return to the calling that had had her camouflaged in men’s clothing in order to achieve it, but the man’s gargles of blood as she crawled away to die haunted her each moment she thought about returning to her old profession. In any case, it caused less heartache treating those that she could not lose.

The people had slowly wormed their way into her heart as well. Certainly Lucas, inquisitive and loud Lucas whom grew on her more every day, although she would never tell him. The boy had so much potential, if only he could remember to stay focused. Still, Lucas was mortal, and mortality meant heartache, and if there was anything she desired it was to save everyone from more pain.

But that had all changed when the detective, beautiful, intelligent, ferocious Jo Martinez, had walked into her morgue, with her rumpled clothing and imperfect eyeliner. Abigail had felt something familiar stir inside her, the desire to know, to understand, to befriend. Afraid, Abigail had instead pointed out the other woman’s obvious night out, even though Abigail had had more than her fair share of strangers in her bed. 

Prickly, she had done her best to push Jo away, but the sight of her bleeding out on a rooftop had proved that for the first time in so long, she had made a friend. Abraham had been pleased. Life became interesting, colours brighter and sounds louder and her favourite wine tasted that much sweeter. Abigail was happy. Abigail was alive. Abigail wanted to stay alive. 

Increasingly she had made excuses to spend time with Jo, to drink and laugh and complain about male coworkers and cry over dead husbands. Her friend would smile at her, comfort her after she had buried her scalpel into what she had believed to be the neck of her immortal stalker, and when Jo began to move forward with Isaac Abigail told herself that she was only jealous that her friend could move on when Abigail still felt as if Henry was right behind her. 

So, when Jo had showed up in the antiques store, suitcases packed for Paris beside her, Abigail told herself that the bitter relief was just her horrid heart rejoicing that Jo was still as broken as she was. When Jo had emphasised that she did not want a Paris spent with Isaac, Abigail had frozen, her thoughts scrambling as she debated over Jo’s meaning. When Jo kissed her, Abigail realised that being broken simply meant that they could help each other heal.

Abraham had accepted Jo with open arms, (perhaps more than, having lifted Jo into the air in the tightest embrace Abigail had seen), and Abigail’s heart began beating again. One day, she would tell Jo her secret. One day, she and Jo would live pieces of their lives together. Someday, Abigail would grow old, and she and Jo would grow old together. 

One day, Abigail would take Jo to Henry’s grave, and she would introduce them. They would smile, sad yet happy, and Abigail would again be grateful that Jo knew just as well that falling in love again did not make either less powerful. Jo would leave them alone, Abigail and a tombstone, and Abigail would touch the hard rock.

“Oh darling,” she would say, stray tears falling down her cheek. For once, she would stand there, and not feel the need to apologise. “You would have loved her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because I deviate from canon quite a bit here, I just wanted to try and explain a few things.  
> I thought Abigail would want to learn how to be a doctor at some point in her life, and I couldn't get the idea of her dressing up as a boy to do it because no one would let a woman become a doctor in the era she decided to give it a try. I see Abigail as interchanging between doctor and nurse before she became an ME.  
> Abigail going to Louisiana was firstly because I wrote this before episode 23 (or directly after) and didn't know where she actually went. I then figured that this way she doesn't run into Adam, meaning he takes a bit longer to find out there is another immortal.  
> Abigail and Jo becoming a couple is by and large due to the fact that I find Abigail to be more emotionally healthy than Henry, and would be able to move on faster. Plus, it is probably easier to more on from the person you love dying instead of disappearing. Closure, and all that.


End file.
